9. The Godfather (1972)
Arguably the best gangster movies of all time, the
Godfather trilogy is a testament to both Mario Puzi's original novel and to Francis Ford Coppola's sublime direction. However, despite the lush direction of the films, they're definitely morally conflicting and confusing. In case you're one of the seven people on the planet who doesn't know anything about the
Godfather movies, they follow the fictional Corleone family, an Italian-American mafia and crime dynasty in the 1950s. The films portray our family as anti-heroes at best and they're actively shown killing, torturing, extorting, cheating and lying whilst identifying as our heroes. Even the relatively innocent Michael kills and beats throughout the course of the film and we're left with the feeling that his transformation from the young wide-eyed innocent little brother of the family into the cold-blooded murderer that he might have tried to avoid becoming, particularly in the place of his father. The lesson here, kids? Well... if you're part of a crime family (i.e. rich and powerful), you can pretty much get away with murder. Literally.